Media training 101 for small businesses

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Great news: you just scored a big press interview to promote your business. The story will expose your brand to the perfect new audience and drive meaningful traffic to your website. So…don't blow it. Yes, just as quickly as the excitement for the opportunity arrived, the realization that you now have to do an interview sets in. I get it—press interviews can absolutely be intimidating. The resulting coverage represents a significant opportunity to acquire new customers, drive sales, or raise awareness, and you want to be sure to represent your brand well and really compel the audience to check out your company. On top of that, you have to contend with adrenaline and nerves in the moment. You may be thinking, "So many other business owners are so polished and articulate in their interviews. How am I going to pull that off?" Deep breath. A successful interview is usually the result of good media training: preparation and practice in advance of an interview. I've tr...
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Zendesk: App of the day

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You found the perfect ivory pillow to set off the yellow tones in your bespoke ecru sofa, but your holy grail cushion seems to be lost in the mail. Or you logged into your daily gratitude app only to find your morning affirmations listed in the afternoon, and you're not sure what to be grateful for now. Before you freak out, remember the human answering your calls for help.

Zendesk was created to take some of the sting out of customer service by bringing some serenity to the world of support. Chocked full of features and add-ons to streamline helping customers, Zendesk is a mighty support platform that lets you easily meet your customers where they are. The versatile system offers a suite of apps that allow companies who may have lighter support needs to start small, then scale up to a more robust support system as they grow.

The backbone of Zendesk is the Support app—their core ticketing system—that collects customer support requests from email, chat, voice, and social, all in one place. The smartly designed agent workspaces also include customer history profiles and Side Conversations, so agents can easily view the entire customer journey without digging around for info.

Smart settings and workflows can help your team stay more productive. Build in business rules for tickets, like when to send an automated reply after working hours. Or automatically send tickets to the right agents based on their experience with skills-based routing. And pre-built analytics dashboards make it easy to keep track of team performance.

Guide is Zendesk's knowledge-base app, which houses your product's help documentation. A robust home for FAQ and product info makes it easier for your customers to self-serve, reducing your support team's load. And Zendesk's WYSIWYG editor and the ability to import Google Docs makes building your knowledge base intuitive and easy.

With Chat, you can add a live chat feature to your support offerings, making it easy to quickly connect with customers right when they need help most. You can also add on Social Messaging, which lets you connect your social apps to Support. And if you're looking for a voice channel, Talk lets you add on that human touch.

The Support app automatically includes lite versions of Chat, Talk, and Guide. But users can also individually add on the full versions of any of the apps if they meet their support needs or purchase the Support Suite, which includes everything.

Don't let yourself get overwhelmed by your customer support. Keep it chill with Zendesk.

You can automate your forms and surveys with Zapier's Zendesk integrations. Here are a few popular workflows to get you started.

New to Zapier? It's a tool that helps anyone connect apps and automate workflows—without any complicated code. Sign up for free to use Zendesk with Zapier.



from The Zapier Blog https://ift.tt/3mGe6X0

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